Layover in Honolulu on the way to Kauai
 

We are planning a trip to Kauai in May and actually have enough flight miles on Northwest Airlines to take the whole 10+ hour trip in business class. Whoo hoo. The problem? NWA does not go to Kauai so we'll have to fly to Honolulu, gather our luggage, and recheck it on Aloha Air.

Our plane would get into Honolulu at 6 pm. The last flight out on Aloha is at 8 pm. Will we have enough time to make this? How horrible is the airport there? I hate to waste a night at a hotel near the HNL airport but, if we miss the flight, that's what we'll be doing anyway.
Other suggestions?

Karen

Two hours should be plenty of time, especially if you check your luggage all the way through. You can just take the wiki wiki bus over to Aloha or even walk. It isn't far.

Also, flights into Honolulu often arrive quite early if the winds are blowing. Every mainland flight I've come in on this year has arrived 30 minutes (or more)before the scheduled arrival time.

Nothing horrible about the airport. It's small and has the generic assortment of tenants, such as coffee cafes, along with local flavor, such as lei vendors. Also has a koi pond in a park-like cloister. Wish I passed through it more often.

Lex: I beg to differ. HNL *IS* horrible. It is NOT small. It is ALWAYS crowded. Check-in lines are always HUGE. And worst of all, workers there are consistently the rudest, least helpful bunch of people we've ever come across in our family's 30+ years of travels. The one and only time I've ever "lost it" completely to an airport employee was at HNL.

Karen: My advice is to save your NWA FF miles for another occasion. If you've never been to HNL before, even finding the Wiki Wiki shuttle will be an adventure.

You should be fine if you check your bags through to Kauai. I've made it to the Aloah gates from United in fifteen minutes when my stateside flight was delayed. If you're in a time crunch ask the locals around you when you're disembarking if anyone is island hopping and if you can follow them through the terminal. (They don't take the Wiki Wiki shuttle, so be sure to keep your carry on light.) The only problem I forsee as if you should miss the last flight out that evening. Luggage security in Kauai is a joke... I've also missed the last flight out due to a traveling companion's medical emergency at HNL and found the luggage that we check through sitting up against a wall in the baggage claim area at Kauai the next morning even though I had contacted the airport, explained our situation, and asked that our luggage be locked up overnight. They're pretty casual about security in the islands......

I agree with fdecarlo, we love hawaii but HNL is not very friendly airport

fdecarlo: Not to be disagreeable but, we live in and fly out of Atlanta ("Hartsfield-Jackson"), the country's busiest airport, which just made someone's list-again-as the worst airport for passenger satisfaction in the country. It's not that good. It's many, many times larger than HNL. There are Monday mornings where it takes much more than an hour to get through security. We hear routine reports of women roughed up-even body slammed-by our public servants who screen passengers.
I travel far and wide in my profession. My wife's family has been in the airline business since Delta was headquartered in a Louisianna bayou. We've seen bad, here and abroad.
I've always had decent or better experiences at Honolulu's airport. You should consider yourself lucky.
Mele Kalikimaka.